Snow Guardian
by Cotton Candy Mareep
Summary: Jill had made such a stupid, costly mistake. Why did she have to go out into the forest when a blizzard was about to strike the valley? Now she was going to die out here, alone in the freezing cold of the raging snowstorm all around her… unless she can be saved in time. [Day 3: Snow/Blizzard]


**A/N: For Day 3 of my own little 12 Days of Christmas collection, "Snow/Blizzard," I wanted to try something slightly different, seeing as how nearly all of the other fics I've written for this are either romances or just plain depressing stuff. Hope you enjoy this slightly last minute oneshot! -CCM**

* * *

 _Snow Guardian_

Everywhere Jill looked was white. Completely, unceasingly white.

It was all she could see, no matter where she turned, in any direction; even her hand held out in front of her face was blurred in her line of sight. The swirling ivory snowflakes that she had once loved so much in all their beauty had betrayed her, obscuring her vision and chilling her straight to the bone. There was no end to it, none that she could find, unless she managed to find her way out of that frozen forest as soon as possible.

 _Cold_.

All she could feel was the harsh, unrelenting cold. Her panicked breath escaped from her parted lips in short, frosted puffs, and she could almost feel her own life escaping along with it into the frigid air as her body grew weaker with every step, the pain deep within her chest growing sharper as she fought to inhale. She struggled to lift her gradually numbing feet, one after the other, to slowly, clumsily, make her way through the snow that covered the entire world around her, piling up higher by the minute.

Nothing seemed to work - everything seemed to ache, a tender throbbing sensation that only seemed to steadily build and get worse. Her body was wracked with uncontrollable shivering, hindering her navigation through the vast snowdrifts, causing her to stumble over her own feet. But she couldn't fall down, she _couldn't_. She had to keep going if she ever wanted to make it back to the farm alive.

Oh, _why_ did she have to go out into the forest when a blizzard was about to strike the valley? All she had to do was take a minute or two to check the weather report on her television set that very morning, and this all would have been prevented easily. How could she have been so stupid?

 _Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving…_

She had to keep moving if she wanted to survive, or she would surely freeze to her death.

Was it still daytime? Or had night already fallen? It was so hard to tell; she couldn't see a thing through the thick white flakes swirling all around her.

It was all a big mistake, such a stupid, stupid mistake... And now, she might pay dearly for it with her life.

Shuddering violently, she thought of the healing warmth emanating from her fireplace back at the farmhouse, made complete by a steaming mug of hot tea and her sweet black cat curled up comfortably on her lap. The memory was a cruel tease of the heat and security she couldn't seem to find in her time of need, but it also served as a driving force to keep pushing on. She had to make it back, for her animals, all her friends. They needed her.

But she had absolutely no idea where she was, completely lost without a sense of direction, as her vision was completely blinded by pure white. She couldn't even follow her own footsteps back the way she had come, as they seemed to fill in with snow just as fast as she could make them; her prints from earlier that evening were long gone by now.

A sudden thought overtook her reeling mind, and she stopped dead in horrified shock. Wandering about in the middle of the forest, what if she fell straight into the Goddess Pond in all her confusion? She could barely keep herself from running into the trees as it was. And even if the pond were frozen, the thin sheet of ice over its surface would do nothing to prevent her from falling right through, easily cracking under the weight of her disoriented, exhausted footsteps.

However... Maybe the Harvest Goddess would save her if she fell in. That seemed like a Goddess thing to do. Perhaps she might even help her escape from the forest without freezing to death beforehand!

In a dazed sort of stupor, Jill slumped to the frost-hardened ground, unsteadily dropping to her knees in prayer, unable to move on any further. But would the Harvest Goddess answer her frantic prayers for assistance? There was a slim chance, a very slim chance, but it was the only hope she had left. She had to hold on to something, some small shred of hope, or all would be lost.

But it was so cold. So cold…

She could hardly feel the wind now, the powerfully frigid gusts that burst through the forest with every other heartbeat, it seemed. Vicious snowflakes hit her in the face, bombarding her with their icy attacks, but Jill just felt… numb. Surely that was a good sign, that she suddenly couldn't feel the cold anymore?

Or, more likely, it was a bad sign. A very, very bad sign. Maybe she was dying; only moments from death. Maybe she was already dead. Who was to say?

She was too stunned to even remember her warm, welcoming farmhouse by this point, or anything else about her life, for that matter. Those mundane comforts seemed so far away by this point, so alien to her. Were they ever even real? Maybe this was her entire life, after all; nothing but snow and wind and that horrible, numbing cold that seeped through her skin, reaching for her heart.

Or perhaps it was all just a dream; a bitter, painful nightmare. Perhaps all she need to do was just wake up. But how?

She was so tired.

Maybe… she could just take a rest. The blanket of snow beneath… looked so inviting. Never mind that it crunched underneath her weight like it was formed from shards of ice; she was numb to any sort of feeling by now anyway. Perhaps she could just hunker down in the snow for a little and rest up, and then continue on when she didn't feel as though her limbs were about to drop right off. Perhaps the blizzard would even die down by then.

The icy wind screamed through the bare tree branches above, and hit her with the cold like a hard slap across the face, but Jill couldn't even feel it this time. She couldn't hear anything but the slow beat of her own blood pumping in her ears. She couldn't see anything but that never-ending white.

So she closed her eyes.

Moments passed, seemingly an eternity; the ground shook behind her.

And then she felt a sudden intense heat overtake her, enveloping like an enormous furry blanket, and experienced an immediate sense of relief as some life-bringing warmth returned to her freezing body. Oh, it was warm, _so_ warm, so strong it hurt; she would have thought she had been thrown into a fire had she been able to sense the flickering, dancing hues of blazing red and orange beyond her closed eyelids, burning her. She struggled to lift her head, lift her arms, legs, anything, but she was too tired, too weak to move, regardless.

 _Was_ she dead?

She opened her eyes again and tilted her head upward to see, just barely, the beady black eyes of a pure white creature standing over her, watching, _protecting_ her. Two great burly arms gently wrapped around her, covered in pale, coarse hair that felt almost like the soft hay the farmer kept in her horse's stable. Normally she would have felt afraid, but this was an unusual circumstance, after all.

The creature began to hum, a soothing lullaby that drowned out even the shrieks of the howling wind, and Jill felt a sudden sense of comfort, safety, before she blacked out completely and the entire world went dark.

"Jill?"

Something... was calling her name. Someone. A gentle voice, so familiar...

But she was so tired. Did she really have to get up just yet?

However, the voice was insistent, and finally she opened her eyes to a soft face with kind, concerned brown eyes peering down at her with worry.

"Jill! Can you hear me?"

The farmer nodded her head ever so slightly – she felt so, so stiff – and looked around. She was… in her home. The farmhouse, yes.

And then the memories came flooding back to her; the deathly cold struggle for survival in the midst of the snowstorm. Had she really made it back? Or was this just another dream?

There were two men in white coats beside her bed; one with a scarred face and menacing robotic eye, which would have startled her if she hadn't already known the man well by now, and the other a handsome young man with dark hair and a serious expression clouding his face, much softer on the eyes.

"Jill, we thought you were dead!" To her other side, her best friend Celia stood with tears forming in her eyes, looking the smallest bit hurt as she watched the girl on the bed stir. "What were you thinking, going out in a raging blizzard like that?"

Beside her, the brooding dark-haired farmhand Marlin nodded, his face strikingly pale in the soft yellow light that bathed the room. "...You were so cold when they found you, just at the edge of forest, right near the entrance to your farm… We thought..."

He trailed off, dreading to imagine what would have happened had they not found the farmer there, or even worse, had found her gone.

"Takakura was the one who found you," the older of the two doctors, Dr. Hardy, spoke up. "You're lucky he brought me here when he did, or you might not have made it."

Marlin nodded. "He'll be back here in a few minutes, actually; he's going to be thrilled to find out that you're alright."

The brunette on the bed stared at her two friends, lost in thought, as Celia wiped at the tears streaming down her own face, a relieved smile gracing her lips even as she cried. "It's a miracle you're even alive! A true miracle... I don't know how else to explain it but as a blessing from the Harvest Goddess herself..."

But Jill wasn't entirely listening.

...There had been something huge and white, and _furry_ , she remembered. Just before her memory escaped her completely, in that terrible moment where she brushed with death, it had come to her. It _saved_ her, shielding her poor, shivering body from the cold and snow until further help could come to her.

Jill had always thought it was just a myth, a story that the villagers told their children at night, a rumor spread around the valley with the intent to make life just that little bit more interesting. But, unless she had been fully delirious even then, which she had a feeling wasn't the case, then it was all true - the Guardian of the Forest was real. Her guardian in the snow.

Perhaps the Harvest Goddess had answered her prayers and sent her blessing, after all.

"Yes, a miracle..."


End file.
